Her Victory (68 page)

Could he still love such a person? Wouldn't much matter. Couldn't matter. She loved him in so far as it didn't interfere with her being herself and doing whatever she wanted to do. Travelling not only broadened the mind, as it was said, but opened it where all had been closed before. If somebody loved you, and she believed him when he said he did, they loved you in spite of you being yourself. They saw something more mysterious than yourself to be in love with. She felt the same with regard to him. There was an equality in a relationship that cemented them in spite of all surface imperfections, of which she sensed there were many.

He was busy, and didn't care what she thought. Even when her speculations were spoken aloud he did not seem to concede their importance.

She felt less sleepy after food and tea. ‘Tell me if anything's coming. I'm going behind that bush.'

He repacked the stove, then himself went to piss.

She said: ‘When we set off, I want to do some driving.'

He gave her the keys.

She began slowly, going barely thirty miles an hour. The road was curving, undulating, and in places narrow. He sat with the map on his knees, and she felt that every mile seemed like ten to him. ‘You don't need to worry. I've driven ever since George got his first car. Not all that often, because he never liked me using his precious possessions, but I can drive all right.'

At this rate, she saw him thinking, we'll be a week on the road before landing anywhere. ‘I can look at the scenery for a change,' he said.

‘Well, do it, then.'

But he observed the road as if he were still driving. He'll get used to it, she thought. He worked out every gear-change and brake tread, looked in the (for him) non-existent rear mirror whenever she needed to move out and get by stationary cars in a village. At junctions and crossroads he looked to see if it was clear.

‘I'm not nervous at all,' she said, ‘and I'm the one who should be. So don't you be.'

He laughed. ‘You caught me out.'

‘Hard not to.'

It began to rain. ‘Which switch works the wipers?'

He reached across. ‘That one.'

‘Thought so.' A few miles further on she said: ‘Where do we stay tonight?'

‘Wherever we land. Most places have a hotel of sorts, and I expect they're pretty much the same.'

So they could drift. Just as well, at the rate I'm going. It was more interesting, and in a way more relaxing, to drive instead of twiddling your thumbs as a passenger in the cabbage seat. ‘You just tell me when you've had enough,' she said. ‘Then we can find a place to eat and sleep.' A car coming from the opposite direction flashed its headlights. ‘What was that for?'

‘Well,' he said, ‘he's either warning you to slow down because there's a police speed trap ahead, though I don't think that can be the reason, or you're just a shade too far to the middle of the road.'

‘You're so bloody diplomatic.'

‘It's my nature.'

‘Just as well.' On a straight piece she increased to fifty and overtook a 2CV van. He tried to count the trees as they went by, but they rippled along his vision like a washboard. The
chaussée
was certainly
déformé
, but she seemed not to have noticed. Or it didn't matter.

At seven o'clock she drove into the square of a large village. The blonde middle-aged landlady of the Hôtel des Charmettes showed them street-floor accommodation across from the hotel. All other rooms were taken. He went back to fill in the passport form. They walked before dinner, sharing an umbrella along streets of grey houses that were mostly shuttered and seemingly minus inhabitants, despite the Michelin's claim that the village had eight hundred. She liked the clean air and occasional touches of rain when a corner was turned. ‘It's marvellous to be in such a place,' she said, ‘and know we'll be gone in the morning.'

A mildewed statue to a local philosopher of the last century glowed with the sheen of sunlight between showers. ‘I've turned you into a sailor,' he said.

‘I always was one, perhaps. And maybe you always weren't.'

‘I think I'm tired of continually wondering what I was, and trying to find out who I am. I don't think it much signifies. I don't know, and don't want to know. Or I know, and don't care. Whatever happens will happen, and that's all that matters.'

Each word was an ache to his spirit. Confusion was never far below the surface, and he couldn't stop indications of it breaking through. To that extent she had ruined him, or humanized him, though the turmoil would have been there no matter what childhood he had gone through, or what life he had led. Whatever he wanted he hadn't yet found, and she suspected he knew very well but wasn't capable of discussing it. He was lost, more lost than she had ever been. His tightrope of despair underfoot had turned into a razor-blade. He did not want to speak because he felt that changes were coming over which he would have no control, and that whether good or bad came from them they would be better by far than the perilous uncertainties that embroiled him.

But it was nothing to do with her. The fact that she was close would not make things easier for him. He knew it also. Love should be made to support only so much. She knew what she wanted, and it was up to him to know what he wanted. She wanted not to want, and at times felt close to that state. He wanted to want, and was nearer than he imagined. In a way it made some kind of harmony out of the chaos, a space at the centre of the storm in which she could stay calm. If she could thus be at rest she would be able to help him, and to that extent love could go a little way towards their support.

They got into the soft double bed at eleven and kissed goodnight, turning away into separate sleep. Every day generated absolute exhaustion. It wasn't possible for the bones to be more tired, softened and ready to melt. But sleep fought away from such a body. Traffic went by outside, beyond the narrow pavement. The worst was the motorbikes which, though rare, cut the silence like an enormous saw. Someone upstairs finally dropped his second boot and got into bed.

The ceiling was made of paper, and when she heard him pick his boots up there was light at the window and she realized it must be dawn. Dreams, though unremembered, still weighed heavily, so she snuggled against Tom in the soft cave of the bedclothes until nine o'clock, when he moved away and got up.

They crossed the road for breakfast. She felt a sharp pain in the middle of her back, unable to take close to a full breath, or make a complete yawn which it seemed vital to do, giving her a tense expression that Tom remarked on as she poured the coffee.

‘The bed was damp,' he said. ‘Steamy, in fact. Maybe you'll feel better when we're on the road.'

The old cure-all, she hoped. She was hungry, which was a good sign. When she managed to get a full breath she expressed gratitude at being alive.

13

They packed, paid, and set off, Pam at the steering wheel. The road twisted through lush country, and after a few miles she came up to a gaggle of lorries impossible to overtake. She resigned herself to the trundle, holding back from the one in front while Tom stared at the countryside. A long stretch of road was needed to overtake, but when there seemed sufficient, vehicles were always coming the other way. There was nothing to do, he said, except sweat it out. Only a lunatic would try to shoot by. According to the map there would be some dual carriageway in twenty miles. And the land would get flatter by the river.

The ache in her back was as if a large pin had stuck there which only let her take a full breath if she began slowly and hid her intention of breathing at all. Before she could succeed in her purpose she would often come full-stop against a barrier of pain and anxiety that forced a retreat back into shallow breathing. She would try again, using the same tactics, and when a full breath came the relief felt like victory indeed.

The road was empty from the opposite direction, but other cars out of the queue behind were already racing by. She wanted to stop driving, but it was impossible because the rheumatic pain and heavy dreams of the night goaded her on.

She also felt the tension in him when he was no longer interested in the scenery. He was impatient because she could not overtake the lorry and get on. He lit two cigarettes and passed one, but after a few puffs she left it in the ashtray. Speed was slow, but they progressed some miles, as he must have seen from the map. She only wanted to cover more of the road. Being a driver had its compensations, in that you forgot yourself. Who or what you were was of minor importance. You simply had to get ahead, and stay alive. Life was simple.

‘Is it clear?'

There was nothing behind.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm going!'

‘Now?' he urged.

It was a game with basic rules, and they were in it together. It was her throw. She came down to third gear, moved into the clear, and accelerated forward. The enormous arseswaying lorry seemed by her side for ever, as if maintaining speed however much she increased hers.

‘Bit more gas,' he said coolly.

‘More gas!'

A bend was close, perhaps half a kilometre, but a hundred-mile-an-hour Citroën coming around could reduce it to nothing in a few seconds. Her indicator was already flashing for when it would be necessary to nip sharply in.

She was at the front of the lorry, then beyond it. A car from around the bend was flashing headlights as it came towards her, a jungle-monster out of the bush and dead-set for her death. The lorry behind signalled with its light, and she got safely in, swaying slightly then straightening as she took the bend.

She felt triumphant, as if she had passed a test, but decided from then on to be careful.

The lorry she had overtaken was only a foot behind her rear bumper, keeping a full battery of headlights beamed into her mirror.

‘The sod! He knows it's a woman driving.' She increased speed so that he fell behind.

‘At the next place,' Tom said, ‘there's a
Relais Routier
eating-house where we can have a proper meal.'

The pain was acute in her chest and back ribs, but a full breath came more often, the tension relaxing as they shared a bottle of wine over lunch. She wondered whether a lorry man who came in hadn't been the driver of the one she had overtaken. ‘It's good to have a co-driver to share the labours of the road,' Tom said.

‘Hard to believe.' But he meant it, she knew, touching his glass with hers. ‘Your turn when we set off.'

A youngish cadaverous-looking man came in clothed in black leather, probably a motorcyclist, she thought. His tall figure, pale face and staring gentian-blue eyes attracted her. He took a table by the curtains, as if he wanted to observe traffic going by, even while eating. He disturbed her, though he didn't care or even realize. The waitress took him a litre of wine, and Pam turned away, to go on with her meal.

They walked the town for an hour, stood at the ramparts by the church and looked down a steep declivity with heavily wooded banks. She saw the black-clad motorcyclist travelling along the road they had come in by.

Tom drove as if to make up for lost time, back on the cavalry charge when the road straightened, overtaking traffic as if hoping to get in front and have an empty highway to himself.

Impossible, he knew. There would always be someone ahead as long as you were in life and not death. But the striving was there which, he supposed, would never leave him.

There was no hurry, she knew. Embroiling dreams pulled her from the ever-rolling road, the motorized dragon-roar of traffic passing from the opposite direction, and high flat clouds over the riverine landscape. She went willingly to sleep, giving herself to a change from the eternal sound and motion of travel. George, pursuing and ranting, followed into her dreams. She was glad to wake when the map fell from her knees, and was happy to see Tom's face. ‘Was I dozing long?'

‘Half an hour.' She glimpsed his profile as he concentrated on his work. She wanted to kiss him, but to do so might smash them to pieces, and bring their return more quickly to the kind of end they would never hope for. He felt her scrutiny. ‘How are you feeling?'

‘The aches and pains have nearly gone.'

He smiled. It was easy to make him. His face, difficult to focus, turned into George's, and she heard an unstoppable scream tear itself from her ribs. I was only wondering whether it was you and not somebody else.

The car slowed. ‘What is it?'

‘There was something in my eye. An insect. It's gone now.' He was troubled. Who wouldn't be? ‘How far's the next place with a hotel?'

‘Fifteen kilometres,' she told him.

‘We've done enough today.'

They went into the town, trees along the road, people walking the pavements. They lived here, worked here, were born and would die here, most of them. She envied them. Life seemed calm. Young girls strolled with their boy-friends. There was a public square, with a newspaper kiosk and garden seats. The streets were narrow, and shops open. It was like being back in the world when he parked and they stood upright on the gravel to stretch themselves. She belonged nowhere, only to herself. Yet she belonged everywhere she came to, and to nowhere in particular, the only certainty was that she was with Tom, covering the trail of a journey without end.

The hotel was modern, their room on the fourth floor. Out of the window she saw river and country beyond immediate roofs. ‘We must look like tramps coming out of the car.'

‘People are used to seeing such things.'

They washed and changed.

‘We'll soon feel human again,' he said.

He lay on the bed, and no sooner was his head on the pillow than he was asleep. It was still light outside, so she picked up the car keys and drew the curtains so that he wouldn't wake till dinner.

She walked across the road to the parking space and unlocked the door, wanting the basket so as to buy food for tomorrow's stint. To reach Dieppe by evening and get on the Channel ferry wouldn't leave time for a sit-down meal. Broad daylight invited her to turn on the ignition. She backed out. A hundred miles would roll before he awoke. Traffic was leaving town, and she joined it, cars behind and in front, hers anonymous and unremarkable, one of the crowd.